Yeah. I know. We have discussed this to death. Yet, Gameworld Network is running an Op-Ed, if you can call such a thing, detailing 10 reasons why consoles are superior to PCs. GWR has decidedly taken the high road calling PC gamers snobs along with other insightful nuggets. Watch out Michael Dell. Some highlights:

Games look better and Controllers are more comfortable.

While some arguments are reasonable others are plain juvenile. No mention of the near impossibility of MMOGs without a keyboard or the fact that RTS and FPS games are somehow lacking without a keyboard and mouse.

MobyGames has a really strong PC following. We are less strong on the console systems. Some of this is an artifact of MobyGames starting out as a PC only website. Partly if may be due to a policy decision to require screen shots taken from the actual contributor. Grabbing a screen shot from a console is much harder than a PC.

Is this a good thing? What would it take to improve the MobyGames console offering? Is GWR totally off base?

Hmm... well they also have a "PC > Console" rant.

http://www.gwn.com/articles/article.php/id/784/p/1/

Anyway, having read the Pro-Console article, it's a good thing PC gamers are the snobs.

We really discussed this already. Saying one is better than the other is off-base and biased. It takes a total balance of both. While I am a console gamer at heart, I respect the PC for the type of graphics and online gameplay it can garner.

I think its funny because they call PC gamers snobs while acting just like them: downplaying the other while calling themselves higher.

Both PC and console have their ups and downs, its just a matter of preference and money.

And hey, I swaer that they stole that list from me! Didn't I post nearly the same exact reasons a while ago!

GWR is definitely not off base. I started playing computer games in 1989, one of my first games was Karateka, that's when I said to myself that I have to have an Apple II. Then came Prince of Persia, and in 1993 I got my first 32-bit 386dx 40 PC. Computer games are fun. At least they were definitely fun in the past. You didn't need to upgrade every three months in order to enable all effects and see every detail. But as the years went by, companies started to realise that they need to get every last cent out of people by not optimizing games and adding conditions like "if processor<1000$ latest mark 10 model then you can't play." So I upgraded, and in 1998 upgraded again. 1998 was a good year. Unfortunately that P-200 MMX PC is a joke today. So here I am sitting on my P-4 @ 2.4Ghz x800 pro pc today. Some games have become as insulting as ever. I'm sure that I'm not the only who has experienced this situation - you've got a dx9.0 card but after two months they release dx9.0c and guess what, you can't enable some stupid effects. The latest trend is as the article wisely points out 5000x5000 resolutions and 256x antialiasing. Who cares? I'm sick of people who play a game just because 'it looks great' but they don't give a damn about its gameplay and would never touch any older game (like, for example a 90-96 classic game) which does not have pixel shader version 5.0. No matter how hard I try, it is almost impossible to convince a 'new-generation' person to try doom, dune, dune2, c&c, broken sword 1 or any other older game which was not made to use dx 11 but rather offers a unique experience which quite few newer dx9 games offer. While there are PC titles like Syberia, they are few and far between, and what we have in large quantities today are FEARs.

Let's look at the current PC titles then. What was so special about FEAR apart from the fact that you needed to wait several months in order to get full speed with soft-shadows and what not all on? It has one of the crappiest engines around and is not at all that 'beautiful' but it sure can be buggy and run slow. Then we come to Oblivion. A pretty sight. What they've done is do a one week main story quest and then throw in your face their 10000 side quests which are so generic, boring, and unrelated but hey you get 3 months of 'quality' gameplay that way. This whole thing is a big joke. You don't need 20x antialiasing and a 6000x6000 resolution in order to have fun. In fact, when you buy a new video card, there is the major risk of Microsoft releasing directx 10.1 or 10b and then you realise that you will never be able to see that 'new' effect in the 'new' games until you get the new video card revision. I don't even want to mention those forum signatures with every single component of a PC listed even if it is five years old, people still append that crap in every single message. Why? That was another good point in that article.

Next, we come to the coveted MMOG zone. I just do not see the reason it is so coveted. If I have to be fair, mmorpgs are nothing short of high-tech chat zones. Sure, you can kill monsters, team up with other people, feel massive and all that but in essence MMOGs mean going nowhere forever. I can give World of Warcraft as an example, as it seems to be next best thing now. I played it for a month, there were good moments in it like helping people, fighting the opposing faction but there were moments which were not at all that pleasant. In the beginning quests were more coherent but the further you advance in the game the more inconsistent the experience becomes. When you are around lv30 you have to travel around both continents twice in order to finish not-so-rewarding-quests. It was like go there, get something, go somewhere else, lose more time, go back, repeat. It was annoying. A good group was often rare and this was all the more frustrating because in order to complete the 'nice' quests you needed people, but those people have to be friendly as well and not do a massive quit in the middle of an instance. Stuff like that made the game seem more and more unattractive to me. So I just suspended playing it. I simply cannot imagine what a person you have to be to play (and grind) forever.

And now we come to the console part. I did not always respect consoles. At first I was also in the anti-console camp. I thought that consoles were unnecessary and could not fare well against PCs. Now, after actually trying console games my beliefs have changed. Around 1995 I only had a PC and could just see a sega megadrive or a snes here and there but I would never think of getting one. I did find them interesting though. My first solid console experience was with the Playstation 1. I actually made friends with a person from my group when I entered university. Little by little I become more and more enthusiastic about giving consoles a chance. I decided to try the PS1 game Final Fantasy VII out and now I will never forget that decision for the rest of my life. My eyes were opened then, I saw that it was not just PCs that offer games of exceptional quality. That friend of mine got a Playstation 2 and kept telling me about it and I became all the more interested. So I finally went to his place to see it with my own eyes and judge if it's any good. Needless to say, around December 2005 I finally bought a Playstation 2 and I love every single bit of it. The first ps2 game I finished was God of War. I was somewhat speechless after this game. Sure, handling console fps games or even console rts games can be difficult but can you give me an example of a PC game that can be compared to God of War? PCs just do not have God of War(s). After that I got my hands on the game called Ico. Everything I say now will not be enough to describe the ingenuity and beauty that can be seen in this marvellous work of art. Incredible graphics, and yet totally immersive and offering unparalleled gameplay. Now can you beat that? A 2001 game played on a 2000 game console beating visually (and not only) many PC games of 2005 and 2006. But that is what you get when you use a console. It _is_ meant for games and games only and that is where the significance lies. I also got Final Fantasy X. What should I say here? Once again, a game made several years ago totally blowing away many 2005 and 2006 games. This list can get longer but I think that I made a point.

So it should be clear by now that GWR's article may seem a bit harsh to die-hard PC fans but it definitely offers many valid arguments. Let's be honest about it, I don't say that PCs don't stack up well against consoles, or that they are useless. I just say that one cannot easily dismiss consoles by saying that they are worthless, having the 'uglier' version of a game and so on and so forth. PCs are great, they were _the_ thing that got me into gaming in the first place. But after trying the Playstation and the Playstation 2 myself I can say that consoles can offer an experience unlike anything you haven seen on the PC. Plus you don't need to upgrade it every three months or worry about a game not looking as beautiful or running as fast as it should. I am not saying that PCs do not have quality games but saying that consoles are not worth it just because it's difficult to play fps, rts or the ridiculous mmo games on them is absurd.

Finally coming to mobygames.com. I agree that sometimes it is a bit too obvious that the focus is more on PC games. Nevertheless, it has to be admitted that mobygames' console database is pretty solid and it has been very helpful to me more than once. Sure, screenshots may be missing in some titles, but almost always there is useful information which is hard to find elsewhere. I just love looking up a game and getting so much organized info on it in just one page. And that is not to be neglected. I almost never find a missing console entry, except for some brand new titles but even they make it in the database sooner or later. I simply cannot say that mobygames' console offering is unsatisfying.

Very well put, and while i don't have time to pick apart every part of that entrie post, it was very well written. Don't let that just be a post, you could write an entire featured article on that. Make sure you copy that onto a clipboard or save it in a document. that could definitely work as a featured article, and you can expand upon each subject more.

Anyway, I never said that they were wrong, in fact, they have some very valid points. For one, console gaming is cheaper, less glitchy, and a myrid of other things.

But anyway, I agree with you and I prefer consoles WAY over PCs, you have a lot of good points in there as well.

With me it varies depending on the genre. I find that I enjoy FPS games much more on PC and 2D/3D platformers more on consoles. I love to play Final Fantasy style RPGs on consoles, but also like playing the more D&D-like ones that you tend to see more on PC. Possibly, this might change in the future given different control devices, new game releases and so forth, but at the moment, I find them equally appealing.

I love consoles, but I hate when people defend articles like this. The article is the same drivel that makes it a chore to read Joystiq with its constant Sony/Microsoft fanboy back and forth in the replies to a news piece, people arguing a point when they think they're right when it's so obvious to a neutral party that they're either stupid or just ignorant, making it impossible to sift out worthwhile information. Every one of these 10 'points' is easily dismissable within seconds, and a couple of them are actually arguments FOR PC gaming, although the author doesn't seem to be aware of that.

I was a console gamer before being a PC gamer. I still love consoles, got ROMs galore at hand and my physical hardware in a closet close at hand when it's not hooked up to the TV. But I hate the people that play them exclusively while thinking the PC is backwards.

Then again, it's all good for a laugh. Going to be digging Company of Heroes online this weekend on my Conroe/Geforce 7900 setup. Inferior multiplayer my ass. With better visuals and framerate than Resistance: Fall of Man to boot, and controls that would never work on a console. Sorry PS3, you lost to the 360 when you didn't launch this spring and your visuals are worse than the PC even before your release, along with a cost that damn near matches the system I put together last month and almost rates an '11' according to that article. Sheesh.

Yavor, all that talking should be in the "about me" part in their profile ;-)

Well, about your post... I agreed with almost everything you said, except this part... "PCs just do not have God of War(s)"... no, we don't have God Of War but neither consoles have Starcraft(s). Or Diablo(s). Or Sims.

And second correction, how is possible that you say that "A 2001 game played on a 2000 game console beating visually (and not only) many PC games of 2005 and 2006.". I mean, perhaps you just use your PC now to play card games, but everyone knows that PCs have the best visuals in the race. And FSAA. And AF.

Well, just wanted to pinpoint those two details here. I agree with you in all the other arguments.

I think that it's not about who's the better, but about how one complements the others, and viceversa. Yavor expressed this very well, one needs a PS2 to play games like Ico, Shadow Of The Colossus or God Of War. And you'll need a PC to play Starcraft or C&C. Now, quoting Kerrigan, "let's play nice with each other", ok? ;-)

[rvana wrote--]

Well, I don't play only card games on my PC now. ;) Among the games I have finished relatively recently are Prey will all settings on @1280 and Tomb Raider: Legend. What I mean is that few computer games released even nowadays offer the scale, detail and all the lush visuals that games like Ico, which was released in 2001, offer. And let's not even mention a 2002 or a 2001 PC game. You could never give an example of a 2001 pc game that comes close to the 'beauty' all pc gamers look for. Antialiasing and af are not everything. You could enable antialiasing and af in an older pc game yet you won't get the complete beauty. AA and af are not everything. I agree that they do contribute but it is not all about them.

What I also want to say is that I'm glad you understood what I was driving at. I'm not saying that we should only play console games, I'm saying that PCs and consoles can complement each other. Thank you for that comment. :)

We *just* discussed this *again* in another thread... :(

Calling either side a snob is immature at best. As for the quote you added about the games looking better and controllers being more comfortable on a console... computer monitors always had better graphics than televisions. The new blu-ray technology *may* change that for people with HDTVs, but it may not. As for controllers, PCs can use the same controllers as well as having the option of keyboard, mouse, joystick, other kinds of gamepads, etc.

I am so tired of the bashing back and forth that I'm not about to go read that article, nor am I going to start *RE*-listing how the "reasons" that people say consoles are better aren't entirely accurate. I won't say PCs are the only good system for gaming because both have their good and bad sides, but they are most definitely not as bad as console people always claim. Nor are they *anywhere* near as expensive as console people claim. All the talk of having to upgrade all the time just to play a game is a crock unless you only ever get the cheapest things that will do what you need for a specific game. I have thousands (yes, thousands... you'd be amazed at the collection of older games that are installed on my computer) of games on my computer and they all work fine on a system that hasn't been updated at all in a year. They also all worked fine on my system that hadn't been updated in 2 years... the only reason I upgraded was because I burned up the cpu because of a bad heatsink. Other than that new CPU and a new hard drive just because I wanted more space... I have 700GB now ;) ... this computer hasn't been upgraded in 3+ years and it plays every new game out there. I listed 3 that were slow in the other thread and the reason is because I did what I mentioned above... I bought a cheap video card rather than a good one and so it is slow on those 3 games. Otherwise, everything I play works fine... and as I said, I play a LOT of games. Mainly because I can't stay interested in one game for more than a week or so in most cases and then I need something else. So go ahead and spout all that about spending so much on upgrading all the time ... it doesn't fly. I've never bought the top-of-the-line stuff, nor have I spent more than $400 on an upgrade in over a decade and as I've mentioned, I don't upgrade often, and everything still runs just fine.

I'd be amazed if a 3 year old computer, which wasn't top of the line at purchase, could run Battlefield 2 well. It requires a minimum of 1.7GHz just to run. Good game, but impressively inefficient engine.

That however, is besides the point. We can always find "exceptions to the rule", and I think you're mostly right anyways. In general, people don't need to upgrade, as much as people say. If you choose your parts wisely at purchase, it can last a while. There are games which do require more frequent upgrading, such as the FPS genre, but many other types can do much longer without one. Myself, I find that I generally "need" to upgrade every 2 years if I choose wisely, and want to play new game releases at the higher levels of detail. That's certainly far long longer than the weeks or months that people jokingly say.

Unless you want to play with full settings, there really isn't a need to upgrade all the time. And even then, often just changing the graphics card or adding some memory can work miracles. It's the graphics card requirements that seems to be the key and this has been the case for quite some time. I do think that we will see games that really require a dual core processor starting next year, though. But hopefully this is because the physics engines imrpove. That's a part of current games that really need improving along with AI.

As for graphics, yes, they are not everything, but I don't mind them getting better. And since they are so important in marketing, it's no wonder the developers keep pushing the envelope.

Oh, and about optimization: yes, that would be nice. But with the current climate and the impossible deadlines the developers are faced with it's often impossible to spend a lot of time optimizing the code. Optimization is usually very time-consuming and requires very experienced people to do. Remember that many games are built on someone elses graphics engines as well.

I had a 2GHz 3 years ago, so yes... it would. :)

It would run very poorly unless you had a new model graphics card. It's one of those games that being near the minimum doesn't cut it. Fine game, just sloppy coding. Sloppy coding being something I think we'll be seeing more in the future with consoles following the X-Box trend of internet/hdd patches. :(

It could be that you are correct, but most games are not that badly written. So, I still would have to say that most will run on that system.

"...computer monitors always had better graphics than televisions. The new blu-ray technology *may* change that for people with HDTVs, but it may not"

I would agree, and I don't think HDTV's will be changing that much; probably what will happen is HD displays will bring consoles on par with computer displays for a while, and then I imagine computer displays will just keep on slowly marching towards higher and higher resolutions while tv's remain at 720p or 1080p resolution for quite a long time.

I don't think some people on both sides realize that gameplay is more important than graphics in consoles or PC's. Maybe we should discuss this issue more.

Gameplay *is* more important. However, gameplay isn't really any different between console and PC. The control method is different, but the games are usually played the same. Gameplay changes when going to handheld platforms, but not usually from PC to console or console to PC.

If you really break it down, what I think are the biggest factors in each system without getting into all the biased opinions are:

PROS (The pro for one is the con for the other, so I won't list them again)

Console

No compatibility issues

No installations

No upgrading

Certain popular games are only available on consoles

PC

More games

Ability to patch a game to fix bugs or to add things to the games (some see patching as a bad thing, but I'd rather have an option to improve a game than to not have such an option... and patching is usually quick and easy, so I'm including it as a good thing)

Usually better graphics available (though a person may not have access to seeing those graphics depending on their system)

More control choices - keyboard, mouse, joystick, gamepad, steering wheel/foot pedals, etc.

You can play games without a CD/DVD if you want (some because the game allows it, the rest by using a nocd crack or by making an image and storing it on your computer and using a virtual drive to run it). For people with many games, it's easier to just run the game without having to find the CD/DVD.

The ability to emulate most other platforms (other than the newer ones).

Note that I will not list money for a Pro on either of those. If you consider value (# of games you can play for the cost of the system/upgrade), PCs leave the consoles in the dust because there are so many games available for PCs. If you consider the cost of the systems initially (new PC vs new console), then consoles do better, though if you build your own decent computer, you can still do it for around that $600 price tag if you know where to get good deals on new parts. If you consider the cost of upgrading a current PC if you upgrade the way I do (I can play basically any game and have always been able to except for a short time when pixel shading was new and my card didn't support it), which is about one upgrade every 2-3 years for around $300 and compare that to having to buy the next generation of console every 5-6 years or so... PCs may be a little more expensive, but not much. Of course, if you buy multiple consoles at each generation, then PCs definitely end up being cheaper for the upgrades. So, when you really come down to it, you can't really say one system costs more or costs less because there are many ways you can look at cost and in most cases, it ends up being roughly the same.

This point is also worth of noting. Before I continue, I must say that this is *NOT* intented to become another boring platform war, as I said previosuly, I believe in the "make love not war" stuff. But I just wanted to add that the "killer" advantage of PCs over consoles would be just four words: MODS.

You can always get yourself a highly moddable game like any Unreal, any Quake, any Doom, any Duke Nukem 3D ;-), any Starcraft or any Half-Life, lock away in your room, and spend whole years playing both the main game and all its freely available addons. Or tweaking the engine so you can do Machinima. Or using the editor to make your own levels/conversions. I mean, there has been 13 years since the first Doom was released, and altough I tried I still haven't been able to play all the WADs that came on a single CD that I bought back in the day.

With this in mind, in the end it doesn't matter if you spend $600 or $6,000 on a PC. At this point in time PC users have a rather impressive library of emulated games, native games, freeware/shareware games and mods of current games to keep you entertained for the rest of your lifetime, even if you don't buy another new game from now on. That's why the money factor in PCs is irrelevant, in my opinion.

Ah, yes... I forgot to include MODs for the Pros of PCs. Thanks.

And I agree with everything else you said. :D

I wouldn't say number of games per se is the key with PC's, but the variety. There are so many game types that are not available for consoles that if you happen to like that sort of games you really don't have an alternative.

What a load of crap. I loved how he's supposed to write a piece about the merits of console gaming and in the end 50% of it is devoted to bashing PC users, 30% to whinning about how he can't deal with a computer and it's amount of cables and stuff and 20% on just plain bullshit (Xbox Live as the finest in multiplayer entertainment? gimme a break!)

This is why videogame journalism sucks: any moron with "attitude" thinks the fanboyish crap they post in their geek forums makes for interesting and hard-hitting editorials. Fucking n00bs...

I don't have a preference for consoles or PC's. I like both equally, so I don't like it when either side bashes the other. I mostly agree with what you and other moby users have been saying though.

Ah, but just as you say this, every one of those points can be countered by another point and so on and so forth,

I guess saying this was redundant...so change subject...

I do notice trhat there are a lot more PC gamers here at MG than console gamers. Its a bit annoying really...I mean look at this.,.everyone is a huge PC gamer and I can never find anyone who plays consoles as wholeheartedly as me. Well, except I guess for the guy who wrote that long post and likes ICO (sorry I cant recall his name without looking back at the post).

Ok, so is there anyone else here besides me and him who are primarily console gamers?

I didn't say you can't counter them. I said those were, in my opinion, the pros for each. I did not say that one was better than the other. It's true that the PC has more pros on the list, but that doesn't mean that they are as important to a person as the pros on the consoles. Some people really want the ease of using a console (no installs or compatibility issues) more than having stuff like mods and patches and the ability to use no cd/dvd to play it. It all depends on what is more important to each person. Saying that one is better than the other isn't really accurate. It could be better for you, but not for someone else. That's why I just listed the pros and left it at that.

Well, I wouldn't call myself a console gamer (I have more PC than console games in my collection), but I do play console games actively and I agree with you that MG community is clearly more PC- than console-oriented.

And personally, I would love it if all games were available for consoles. I hate incompatibility issues and all the other stuff that makes PC gaming such a painful experience. I play a game on PC only if there is no console version available, or if the console version is clearly inferior.